A Charitable View of Temporary Insanity

Agenbite Misery is a New Hampshire-based trio whose debut album Remorse of Conscience is one of the most ambitious concept records to emerge from the modern extreme metal underground. Formed in late 2022 by guitarist Sam Graff, bassist Cam Netland, and drummer Adam Richards, the band began with a deceptively simple idea: to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses into an experimental metal album. What emerged from that idea is a 55-minute odyssey of layered sonic aggression and literary depth, an album that blends blackened sludge, dissonant death metal, post-punk, ambient drone, and more into a singular, genre-defying statement of purpose.

The name Agenbite Misery is itself a reflection of the band’s literary roots, pulled from a line in Ulysses that references the 14th-century English devotional text Agenbite of Inwit. The phrase, literally “again-bite of inner wit,” or modernized as “remorse of conscience," became the perfect thematic and philosophical framework for an album steeped in grief, alienation, and the search for meaning in modern life. The band’s name was chosen because it reflects the deep, biting sorrow that pervades the novel and their music. Though the original pronunciation might have been “ah-jehn-bite,” the band opts for a harder, contemporary “ae-ghen-bite” as a nod to their mission of dragging ancient texts into the present.

Remorse of Conscience was written over the course of 2023 and recorded in 2024, entirely self-produced by the band, with mixing by Eric Sauter and mastering by Brad Boatright. The recording sessions were a direct extension of the trio’s collaborative ethos: a commitment to honesty, maximalism, and transformation. Each of the album’s eight songs adapts a chapter from Ulysses, using lyrics pulled directly from Joyce’s prose and reshaping them into brutal, beautiful sonic forms. The band sees each track not merely as a song but as a new translation, an attempt to convert stream-of-consciousness literature into aural energy.